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We Need to Be Comforted, not Comfortable.
Thoughts which carry this broken believer to Jesus, and the Cross:
“Also do good things for the city where I sent you as captives. Pray to the LORD for the city where you are living, because if good things happen in the city, good things will happen to you also.”” (Jeremiah 29:7, NCV)
We have lost sight of the fact that Christians cannot live like “everyone else”. The foolish notion that there is no specifically Christian morality is merely one way of saying that a fundamental concept has been lost: the “distinctively Christian” as opposed to the models offered by the “world”. Even religious orders and congregations have confused true reform with a relaxation of the traditional austerity previously practiced. They have confused renewal with comfort. To give a small but concrete example: a religious reported to me that the downfall of his monastery began very concretely with the declaration that it was “no longer practicable” for the religious to rise during the night to recite the nocturnal office. But that was not the end of the matter. The religious replaced this uncontested but significant “sacrifice” by staying up late at night to watch television
These sufferings are often such that even the great and strong would languish and wither beneath them, were it not for the comfort God bestows. These troubles grip the heart and consume the very marrow.
There are days I am tired of being broken.
Whether it is talking about the physical brokenness I endure because of Marfan’s Syndrome, the brokenness I encounter spiritually and emotionally in my community, or the brokenness that I encounter personally because of sin and my own “unique” place on the spectrum, I am tired of it.
I know I am not alone–I have a church and community and friends around the world who are almost as broken, and just as weary and tired of it. Oddly enough, I more I realize I am broken, the more demand is placed on me to come to the assistance of those who are broken as well…and this is evidence of my deliverance, even if, at times, I do not see it.
I think it is because we are taught to pursue comfort–to live lives of leisure, to enjoy the good things in life, and be rid of anything that takes endurance, hard work and suffering. We are told life should be comfortable we should fit in it with ease, like sinking into a relaxing bath or jacuzzi, sipping on a nice cold beverage and letting the past drift away from us. (this is not new – there was a bath soap (or something like that) that used the phrase, “Calgon, take me away!”
But as I titled this blog, I think we have got it wrong. We should not pursue the comfortable, it is a goal that is impossible. We can crowd our lives with distractions, but they will not meet our greatest need..
That is why Jeremiah, as Judah is taken away, tells them to notch it up, to not only endure their captivity, but to strive to make their captors lives better, to work for their success, to pray that the Lord bless Babylon–the very people that took them as slaves and tormented them!
It is what Pope Benedict notes, as he mourns the loss of those who set aside renewal for comfort, who replace time spent in prayer and meditation with watching late night television! He laments the fact that Christian morality embraces harsh times and hardships as they learn to love God and through His love, learn to love the unlovable. The sarcrfice is worth it, for the impact on society is enormous.
While we set aside being comfortable, we find true comfort, as the Spirit, the Paraclete, comforts us. (Logically this doesn’t work unless we need to be comforted!) The troubles that are so powerfully described by Luther drive us to Jesus and to the cross, there is no recliner, no 5 star resort hotel, no self help guru/pastor/coach/cousnelor that can do what the Holy SPirit does, as the gospel is shared through God’s word and the sacraments. Indeed, were it not for that mercy and grace that the comfort consists of, we would be without any hope.
But the Holy Spirit, the Lord of life, is here. He was sent by the Father and the Son to comfort us, to dry the tears, to heal the hurts, to remind us that in Christ we have life–even if that life is hard to see at times.
We are not alone as we bear our cross, and bear it we shall. For we are joined to it with Jesus, and the Spirit comforts us in our grief.
So seek out His comfort – it is worth more than anything – for it is the result of His love, and as your rest in it, you dwell in His peace. Amen!
Ratzinger, Joseph. 1992. Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year. Edited by Irene Grassl. Translated by Mary Frances McCarthy and Lothar Krauth. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Luther, Martin, and John Sander. 1915. Devotional Readings from Luther’s Works for Every Day of the Year. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern.
Which is Your Hope: To Be Comfortable, or Comforted?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
3 “Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them! 4 “Happy are those who mourn; God will comfort them! 5 “Happy are those who are humble; they will receive what God has promised! Matthew 5:3-5 (TEV)
Instead of divine consolation, they want changes that will redeem suffering by removing it: not redemption through suffering, but redemption from suffering is their watchword; not expectation of divine assistance, but the humanization of man by man is their goal.
In his book on the Rapture, Tim LeHaye justifies his belief in the rapture based on the emotional appeal that Christ would never allow His people, the Bride of Chrsit to suffer. (p.65-69) He pictures the church not surviing such suffering, such pain, such horrors. He pictures Chrsit wanting to eliminate suffering for all believers, now, not just in eternal life. He fears the Tribulation, and even suggests that the church would not be able to sruvive it, should she be left behind.
I don’t want to focus on errors in his eschatology, but rather in the presupposition that God wouldn’t allow the church to suffer. This is a much larger issue in American Christianity, for it is not just those that hold to the teaching of a premillenial rapture that would come to the conclusiont hat God wants the church comfortable. i don’t know fo a theological system that doesn’t fall prey to this at some point, including those who like me express theology in a Lutheran or catholic-sacramental context. ( In our modern version, this often means saving people from martyrdom or political oppression. Or in our denial to seek help, whether it be from a father confessor, or a counselor, or a doctor. )
We all have our desire to be comfortable manifest itself in ugly ways. It might be in our attempts to isolate ourselves from the ugliness of sin, or to hide anything that would cause us to feel sharem, or grief.
I think it is a matter of maturity and faith when we can set aside this desire for being comfortable with the desire to be comforted. And when faced with suffering or sacrifice Benedict XVI was right, we want to be redeemed from suffering, to be saved without experience the guilt and shame that tells us we need to be delivered. If we want to be saveed – it is from the guilta and shame, not from what causes it.
But to desire to be comforted, even in the midst of the pain, is something radically different. It means relying on Jesus, on His wisdom, on His promises that what we are going through doesn’t seperate us from Him.
That’s different.
The article I quoted form Benedict above had another quote qorth including:
Before this image, the monks prayed with the sick, who found consolation in the knowledge that, in Christ, God suffered with them. This painting made them realize that precisely by reason of their sickness they were identified with the crucified Christ, who, by his suffering, had become one with all the suffering of history; they felt the presence of the Crucified One in their cross and knew that, in their distress, they were drawn into union with Christ and hence into the abyss of his eternal mercy
There is something about that which cries our with great comfort. We do not walk alone, that we are not abandoned by God to make it through this vail of tears on our own. The Lord is With In our brokenness, in our need for answers, in our need for hope, we find Him, we realize that He is holding us in His hands, bearing our sorrow, our grief, our sin.
So how do we grow in this, how do we lay aside our rights, our comfortability, our pleausre? How do we take up our cross?
By trusting and depending upon Jesus. By finding our refuge in the comfort of His love, by dwelling in His presence, for there we know His peace, there we know comfort, and we experience a joy that sustains us.
Seek His presence, seek His kingdom, there is comfort there… and the more you know it, the easier it becomes to seek.
Ratzinger, J. (1992). Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year. (I. Grassl, Ed., M. F. McCarthy & L. Krauth, Trans.) (pp. 122–123). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
